Friday 2 September 2011

SPECTACULAR flare by IGS 1B!




Click images to enlarge! Do!

This picture speaks for itself. When this happened, I was jumping up and down in excitement, shouting "WOHOOOOO!!!!".

The picture shows the malfunctioned Japanese spy satellite IGS 1B flaring to at least magnitude -8 in Hercules (M13 can be seen as a fuzzy "star" in the picture) at 20:58:40 UTC (2 Sept 2011). It rivalled the best of Iridium flares.

Image shot with the Canon EOS 450D + EF 2.5/50mm Macro, 800 ISO. It was somewhat hazy with a few contrails in the sky, one of them lighting up around the flare for added drama.

Needless to say, I was extremely happy that this happened while the camera was open...

1 comment:

Geert said...

Impressive!